Another user agent issue I face is that it depends on the user group.
For example, if a business or agency provides its employess with user
agents having certain capabilities, it doesn't have to worry about older
user agents, for pages only used by those employees. In other words, we
can assume more for intranet pages than for internet pages. (I'm dealing
with this as we speak BTW).
I think this is yet another argument for having a document (or section of a
document) that deals only with accessibility as a function of user agent,
and omits "requirements" or "compliance".
Requirements for compliance should be in a different document (or document
section), which takes into account the user population (e.g. public vs.
employee) and factors against which there may be a tradeoff with
accessibility (e.g. "essential purpose" ).
I think this will save time in the long run, since we'll otherwise have
perpetual arguments due to different people having different situations in
mind.
Len
--
Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
Institute on Disabilities/UAP and Dept. of Electrical Engineering at Temple
University
(215) 204-2247 (voice) (800) 750-7428 (TTY)
http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday mailto:kasday@acm.org
Chair, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Evaluation and Repair Tools Group
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/
The WAVE web page accessibility evaluation assistant:
http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/